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Best format for cd's?


Hog

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Not WAV' date=' no, they have to be a special CD audio format which, as far as I know, is the only other format that'd work on any but the most bizarre CD players. What does "glass mastered" mean?[/quote']

Its when the cd is made so it will play on any cd player i.e. my cd player is 10 years old so it doesnt play MP3's.Glass Mastering just formats it.

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Um' date=' not sure what you mean. Don't they have to be WAV files before you can play them on CD players, except a few MP3 compatible players?[/quote']

What Im wanting to know is what format is best to save my songs so it is highly likely to play on most cd players, even old ones but is also high quality i.e. not MP3.

Sorry I cant make your Saturday gig Dusty, was wanting to pop down for it but I have a wedding in Elgin:down:

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Not WAV' date=' no, they have to be a special CD audio format which, as far as I know, is the only other format that'd work on any but the most bizarre CD players. What does "glass mastered" mean?[/quote']

16bit 44.1khz WAV is the standard that pretty much every duplication plant (and home duplication software) will accept. It gets re-encoded into CDDA format when the CD is produced, which will be read by all CD players.

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I think all you'll get without a glass master is a CD-R, maybe a very good CD-R but still requiring more laser power/less dirt on the lens to read than a CD.

If you're doing it DIY, burn as slow as possible, not more than 8x, preferably 4x.

By the way, glass mastering is not formatting, it's the making of a "master" from "glass" from which all the subsequent CD's are burned.

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Guest DustyDeviada
Sorry I cant make your Saturday gig Dusty' date=' was wanting to pop down for it but I have a wedding in Elgin:down:[/quote']

Duty calls! I'll throw in a widdly solo in your honour.

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16 bit 44.1khz stereo wav is the ONLY format for a consumer CD. Other formats exist such as SACD which is 24bit 96khz stereo, but nobody's standard CD players support these!!

When you burn mp3's to an audio CD it just converts the files to this format anyway, so you are aswell keeping your files at full 16 bit 44.1 resolution...it wouldn't make much sense to reduce the quality via mp3 before burning your audio!!

I recommend CD Architect by Sony which burns CD's the "red book" standard.

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/Products/ShowProduct.asp?PID=963

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As far as working with mixdowns on your PC is concerned, WAV is the only format you need to worry about. You cannot create CD-DA files from your DAW, this is created when burning your audio to "red book" standard, as I mentioned.

CD-DA files are unreadable on a PC as they do not contain the PCM data which is convertible into analogue audio, they're more like the shortcuts on your windows desktop.

CD-DA = Compact Disc Digital Audio

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As far as working with mixdowns on your PC is concerned' date=' WAV is the only format you need to worry about. You cannot create CD-DA files from your DAW, this is created when burning your audio to "red book" standard, as I mentioned.

CD-DA files are unreadable on a PC as they do not contain the PCM data which is convertible into analogue audio, they're more like the shortcuts on your windows desktop.

CD-DA = Compact Disc Digital Audio[/quote']

WAV is not the only format for a consumer CD, CDDA is the only format for a consumer CD.

WAV is not the only format that can be converted into CDDA.

Get me now?

I should probably add, in case I get another lecture, that whatever format it is should be at least 16 bit, 44.1 kHz.

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Hog' date=' bring back ceiling cat. He's much funnier than Devin Townsend Baby :([/quote']

Seconded. ;)

And yes, Soundian's right- if you're burning an audio cd in standard Red Book format, no matter what the input format is, it will come out as CDDA- so any lossless format (WAV being the most obvious) at 16 bit/44100 Hz burned will be CDDA, and so will play at max quality on any CD player ever made.

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wav being the standard because it is a direct conversion of cdda to a computer readable file, being exactly the same quality (16bit, 44.2KHz)

Files like mp3, wma or most other computer audio formats all reduce the quality and compress the file to make them smaller than a wav file (mp3 works through progressively reducing the frequencys beyond human hearing - the more compression the more is removed) apart from some of the lossless formats .shn and .flac being the two I know of (though there will probably be others) which reduce the file size and keep the quality (not sure exactly how, similar to how winzip reduces files or something I guess)

for burning to cd, keep it all as wav, to keep the quality as high as possible

David

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Seconded. ;)

And yes' date=' Soundian's right- if you're burning an audio cd in standard Red Book format, no matter what the input format is, it will come out as CDDA- so any lossless format (WAV being the most obvious) at 16 bit/44100 Hz burned will be CDDA, and so will play at max quality on any CD player ever made.[/quote']

A wav file contains PCM data....a CD-DA file tells your CD player which part of the PCM data to play. Don't confuse the man, CDDA is NOT an audio file format, not as far as your computer is concerned. Its WAV 16bit 44.1khz....

Try inserting an audio CD into your PC, copying a CDA file onto your hard drive, removing the CD and the opening the CDDA file. NOTHING will happen!! Its like the shortcuts on your desktop, while it launches a program on your computer, if you copied the shortcut to someones computer who didn't have that program, nothing would happen.

I only mentioned WAV as I had seen MP3's mentioned and I wouldn't wish anyone to reduce their audio to mp3 quality before burning to CD....

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16 bit 44.1khz stereo wav is the ONLY format for a consumer CD.

See' date=' here's the problem, WAV is not a format for consumer CDs, CDDA is the format for consumer CDs.

Even assuming that you meant WAV is the only format that can be converted for use in consumer CDs, you're still wrong. Any audio file can be converted, with the right software and any lossless file format will do, not ONLY WAV.

16bit 44.1khz WAV is the standard that pretty much every duplication plant (and home duplication software) will accept. It gets re-encoded into CDDA format when the CD is produced, which will be read by all CD players.

Like the man says, it's the standard, but not the ONLY format.

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